"I'd be very surprised if the hobbits didn't fall down there."

The unexpected discovery of a chamber in the Flores island cave was made last year by an Australian-Indonesian team - led by ANU paleoclimatologist Mike Gagan - while they were investigating ancient climates.

An expert caver assisting in sample retrieval abseiled down a 23m-long sinkhole, inaccessible to the original team, at the back of Liang Bua Cave and found the chamber.

...

Dr Gagan said he and his Indonesian colleagues surveyed just the top 5cm of a 5m-deep layer of mud in the 430sqm cavern. "Imagine what's below," he said. "It might have been a split-level home for hobbits."

Dr Gagan's team will return to the cave in June, with additional members, including Alan Cooper, an expert in ancient DNA with Adelaide University, and CSIRO mammalogist Ken Aplin. Professor Morwood's group will also return to Liang Bua this year, after previously being denied access by Indonesian officials.

Both groups will continue to collaborate with the Indonesian National Research Centre for Archaeology. Dr Gagan's group is also working with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

That should be interesting. Now that they're going back to work, I wonder if we will hear more about the rumored hair in the strata. (via Afarensis).

John Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. I work on the fossil and genetic record of human evolution (About me).

Support the site! When you buy products from Amazon using my link, the site gets 6% of your purchase, at no cost to you. These funds allow me to defray the hosting expenses and keep the site free of advertising.